Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Dark Souls Playthrough--Part 2 (The Undead Asylum)

Having finally settled on a starting character, I was ready to begin my Dark Souls experience. The opening cut scene was fairly confusing, but from what I gathered, you start off in an asylum for the undead. You are unlike the other undead however, as you’re not a mindless, shambling zombie. The first area of the game features you fighting your way out of the asylum and battling your first boss, a sort of jailor demon who watches over the asylum. That’s when I knew that dark souls was going to live up to the hype. In the first game, you ran into a boss right away who killed you, sending you to the main hub of the game--you weren’t expected to be successful against him. In Dark Souls, you have to complete a proper boss fight before you can even access the hub area of the game.

So, after a few crushing defeats at the hands of the demon, I figured out you could do extra damage by dropping down on top of him for a critical hit. That made the fight go a lot easier, and I finished him off with ranged spells after the initial attack. Needless to say, my decision to start as a Sorcerer paid off.

I probably spent about 1.5-2 hours in that initial area, after which I went to the starting hub for the rest of the game. In that time Dark Souls confirmed that it wasn’t going to make anything easy for me.